Your Worst Day

How well do you perform on your worst day? Probably not very well. If that’s the case, then why are you designing systems that work only on your best days? Most New Year’s resolutions fail because of this. 

For example, someone might want to cut out sugar from their diet. Willpower is one system for achieving this goal but when a hard day comes, this system often fails. It is much better to remove all sweets from the house. One step better is to use an accountability partner. Even better is to commit to paying this partner $100 if the system is broken (this one works well for me with my prayer routine and for writing the Good Leaven Letter). 

We could keep going with these upgrades but what they all have in common is that they make the desired behavior (no sugar) more and more likely, even when motivation is low. We can imagine a system that would work even on our worst day. 

This week, I invite you to ask yourself:

What is something I am trying to change? How well does my current system work on my best days? On my worst? What would it look like to create a new system that works better? 

God bless,
Dan